Question: How was the ego born? How did it come into being?

Sri Chinmoy: The ego came into existence from limitation. The moment the soul enters into the physical consciousness or the physical world, it comes down into a strange, foreign world. In spite of being a flame of the Divine and, in essence, omnipotent, the soul in the beginning finds it very difficult to cope with the world. And most of the time it has to endure unpleasant experiences just in order to remain in the physical world and finally establish the Divine here on earth. The ego, day by day, gets the opportunity to function independently and it gets stronger day by day and separates itself completely from the source of its absolute, divine fulfilment, the soul. The ego wants to crush and starve the divine in man, and the ignorance of the physical world feeds that limitation which is ego. The Divine, too, initially feeds the ego, but eventually illumines and transforms it into a perfect instrument of the Supreme.

From:Sri Chinmoy,AUM — Vol. 2, No. 4,5, Nov. — 27 Dec. 1966, Boro Park Printers -- Brooklyn, N. Y, 1966
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/aum_16